


We Will Fill The Empty Caskets

by HASA_Archivist



Category: The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Drama, War of the Ring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-12
Updated: 2015-04-12
Packaged: 2018-03-22 11:20:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3726935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HASA_Archivist/pseuds/HASA_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For Éowyn, funerals are just a part of life. Appearances by Théoden, Éomer, Théodwyn, and Théodred.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Will Fill The Empty Caskets

**Author's Note:**

> Note from the HASA Transition Team: This story was originally archived at [HASA](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Henneth_Ann%C3%BBn_Story_Archive), which closed in February 2015. To preserve the archive, we began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in February 2015. We posted announcements about the move, but may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this author, please contact The HASA Transition Team using the e-mail address on the [HASA collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/hasa/profile).

It is a dark day, a day when old women cry out to the heavens above and wring their hands, a day when men look on and pray for better times ahead, only to be met with the bleakness of the horizon, its vast greyness predicting trouble instead of triumph. They dress the woman in the finest of cloth, her hair wreathed in white flowers — _simbelmynë_ pays no heed to the grief, but only to the roots of the land where it finds no disappointment, no remnants of a line diminished by the shadows of stingy halls and dwindling of dignity that no longer runs in the veins of its youth.  
  
Théodwyn of Rohan, a woman ever-sought for her kind words and prideful spirit, is being delivered to her final destination, a tomb not meant to house her for a great many years. Her children, now absent of both mother and father, can only watch in disciplined silence as she is handed over to the women and slowly laid to rest in the blackness that only death can offer.   
  
Their Uncle, a man approaching his later years much faster than he ever cared to admit, places a giant, yet gentle hand on her slight shoulder. He is used to sternness, having raised a son after losing his Queen to the common slayer that is childbirth, and so the words come slow and carefully.  
  
"Sister-daughter, you are to dwell in my house, and give naught to such woes."  
  
She tries to smile, but it now seems she's forgotten how.  
  
~*~  
  
The day is still young and yet the blood of her cousin runs no more, his body being carried away from the halls of his father and into the fields of Edoras. She stands now beside the tomb, awaiting his armored form, now being maneuvered by the guards who hadn't the duty to be slain by his side.  
  
( _an evil death has set forth the noble warrior,_ she cries out finally in the ancient tongue of her forebears, hands now like the old women from so many years before)  
  
Her mother's grave, untouched and unnoticed, lays just beyond, and she clenches her hands as she remembers all the years spent without a woman's guidance, without the words of matriarchy to help her through this sickening world that only seems to offer her nothing.  
  
( _a song shall sing sorrowing minstrels in Meduseld that he is no more_ )  
  
Théoden-King descends the hill, following his son's stillness and watches as he is passed over to the women, as in the days of old, and finally laid to rest, doomed to never set foot upon these forsaken hills again. For a moment, their eyes meet and she wants to tell her Uncle that the fault is not his, that his son was doing only what was commanded of him as a Son of Rohan, as a Rider of the Mark.  
  
( _to his lord dearest and kinsmen most beloved, an evil death…_ )  
  
Éowyn, Éomund's daughter, has lain witness to one too many funerals.


End file.
